While most people were seeking shelter from a torrential downpour in the city of Hanzhong in northwest China last week, one food delivery worker was busy on his scooter collecting lost licence plates that had fallen off vehicles in the storm.

Wu Zhenlin was making his final delivery of the evening when the rains came down on July 28. He told Shaanxi newspaper HuaShang Daily on Monday that the water was up to 600mm on the road where he pulled over to make his final drop-off.

But as he headed home at around 9.30pm he spotted a number of licence plates that had come loose and were being blown around, so he decided to take off his shoes and wade through the water to collect them so they didn’t get washed away, the report said.

Wu found eight licence plates in one hour and attached them to the back of his scooter the next day, hoping he might find some of the owners as he made deliveries.

Impressed by his mobile lost-and-found service, onlookers took photos of Wu on his scooter with the licence plates stacked behind him and posted them online – helping to find owners and generating some enthusiastic responses on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.